


The Thing About Realizing You Are In Love With Your Best Friend

by JenTheSweetie



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-03
Updated: 2014-03-03
Packaged: 2018-01-14 09:32:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1261456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JenTheSweetie/pseuds/JenTheSweetie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>The thing about realizing you are in love with your best friend, Jim discovers, is that it doesn't happen all at once, or when you least expect it, or any of those other clichés.  It doesn't smack you upside the head with sudden, gasping clarity.  It doesn't arrive in your brain like a message in your padd inbox.  There is no helpful ding.</i>
</p><p>  <i>He's always thought, when he fell in love – if he fell in love – that something would suddenly shift, the world would tilt on its axis, and there, there it would be, written in neon lighting across the viewscreen of the Enterprise: You Are In Love.</i></p><p>  <i>It doesn't go that way.</i></p><p>Jim learns the hard way: love hurts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Thing About Realizing You Are In Love With Your Best Friend

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading. All feedback and concrit is deeply appreciated.

The thing about realizing you are in love with your best friend, Jim discovers, is that it doesn't happen all at once, or when you least expect it, or any of those other clichés. It doesn't smack you upside the head with sudden, gasping clarity. It doesn't arrive in your brain like a message in your padd inbox. There is no helpful _ding_.

He's always thought, when he fell in love – _if_ he fell in love – that something would suddenly shift, the world would tilt on its axis, and there, there it would be, written in neon lighting across the viewscreen of the Enterprise: You Are In Love.

It doesn't go that way. 

It is more like - and not that he would _ever_ tell Bones this, because Bones would not like this metaphor at all - it is more like how you feel when you’re getting a cold. It starts with a tickle in the back of your throat ( _oh, damn it, is that a cold? Nah, probably not_ ) and then you cough once or twice, and soon your nose is running and you feel like crap and yup, now there’s no denying it, you have a cold.

That's a little bit what it feels like to Jim, at least. Except instead of a cold, it’s being in love with your best friend. Not that Bones is like a cold. He can be annoying, sure, and he gives Jim a hard time more often than not, but - _no_ , no, he's nothing like a cold. 

No, Jim decides. Getting a cold is a decent comparison, but it only captures the letter, not the spirit. He'll have to keep thinking of different ways to explain it, because Bones would hate being compared to a cold, if he ever told him about it. _Dammit, man, we ought to have eradicated the common cold by now. Are you saying you'd like to eradicate me?_

Yeah, Jim is definitely going to need a different comparison.

-

Jim considers, after he has settled into the whole thing where he is in love with Bones, whether he might eventually tell him. He considers it while he is brushing his teeth. He considers it while he is sitting in the captain's chair staring out at the stars. He considers it while he is having sex with the extremely attractive Betazoid ambassador to Earth after their diplomatic meeting on Starbase 28 (because being in love with your best friend is not, as far as Jim can tell, any reason to stop having sex with beautiful women).

"You think about him when you come, you know," Arianna says when they are laying in bed afterwards.

"I do not," Jim says. It’s probably not a good sign that he doesn’t even have to ask _who_. He isn't totally down with this thing where Betazoids can basically read minds, and this is exactly why.

"You do," Arianna says, placing a soft kiss on his shoulder. "You should tell him."

"That I think about him when I come? Right. Hey, best friend who as far as I know is not remotely interested in me in that way, I slept with this insanely hot woman last night, but at the moment I climaxed, I was thinking about you. I just thought you might like to know so I can ruin our friendship forever."

"How do you know it would ruin your friendship?" Arianna says, reaching over the side of the bed to find her dress. "Maybe he feels the same way."

"You have not met Bones," Jim says. "Bones would be so pissed if he knew I was - you know - like _that_ \- about him."

Arianna shrugs. "You never know. Maybe he'd surprise you."

-

It is possible that part of the reason Jim is not totally shocked when he finally comes around to consciously acknowledging that he's in love with Bones is that maybe one or two times over the course of their friendship, he'd thought to himself, _Man, I really love Bones_.

(These thoughts were of course very distinct from the one or two _thousand_ times over the course of their friendship that he'd thought to himself, _Man, I would really like to fuck Bones_. That hadn't seemed like a red flag for "you might fall in love with your best friend eventually, you moron" because, let's be honest, he had those types of thoughts about basically everyone. Even Spock occasionally snuck in there, _not_ that he would ever admit that even under threat of torture.)

So, when he finally came down with the cold that was his awareness that he was in love with Bones (oh my god, that is a _terrible_ comparison and he's really going to have to think of a new one some day soon) it was not entirely surprising. He wonders if maybe he has always loved Bones, at least a little bit. 

He thinks about the Academy, when Bones made sure he got up in time for exams when he'd gone out drinking the night before. He thinks about when Bones hyposprayed him in the Academy shuttle bay and dragged him onto the Enterprise with giant hands, all so he wouldn’t be left behind. He thinks about waking up from what he was absolutely certain was death and seeing Bones looking down at him and telling him not to be so melodramatic. He thinks about the dozens, hundreds, thousands of moments when Bones was just _there_ , nagging him or laughing with him or eating dinner with him or beaming down to planets with him and complaining about how much he hates using the transporter but doing it anyway. 

He had figured a lot of those things were just normal best friend things, but he'd never had a best friend before, so he doesn't have a lot to compare it to. Each of his memories feels like a little building block, adding up and creating this thing in Jim's chest that never goes away. Jim thinks it must be love – there is no other explanation – but he thinks that Bones would probably call it heartburn. 

-

"You're my best friend," Jim says out of the blue when they are in Bones's quarters one night, drinking whiskey and finishing up the absolutely fucking endless number of reports that seem to come along with running a starship. 

"I'm not finishing your report on the star charting mission, so don't even ask," Bones says, not even looking up from his padd.

Jim was not going to ask. "I wasn't going to ask," he says.

Bones just snorts. "Pour me another," he says, holding out his glass. Jim just stares at it until Bones finally looks up. "You're my best friend too, Jim," he says, a bit sarcastically for Jim's liking considering he didn't think the best friend thing was even in question. "Is that what you wanted to hear?" 

Jim pours him another. "Yes," he says, even though it wasn't.

-

Jim finally thinks of a better way to explain how falling in love with Bones feels that is better (he thinks) than the whole getting-a-cold thing. 

"Do you ever suddenly becoming aware that you're breathing? You've been breathing your whole life, as long as you can remember, but you've never really thought about it, right? Because of course you're breathing. You would be dead if you weren't breathing. And then once you think about it - because wow, breathing is crazy, am I right? - you can't stop thinking about it. Do you ever get suddenly terrified at the thought of not being able to breathe anymore? Like, what if somebody just took breathing away from you without any warning? Do you know what I mean?"

Bones stares at him blankly from his seat behind his office desk. Jim wonders if maybe bursting into sickbay with the comparison all ready to go, no preamble prepared, wasn't the best idea. "Are you coming down with something?”

Jim declines an exam and decides not to comment on the irony. Bones wouldn't understand anyway.

-

Bones goes to a 3-week medical conference on New Vulcan. Jim sends him a sub-space every day.

_Stardate 2261.141  
You left this morning and nothing interesting has happened since then. Can I go into your quarters and borrow your whiskey?_

_Stardate 2261.142  
I took your silence as consent for the whiskey borrowing I talked about yesterday. _

_Stardate 2261.143  
No, I didn't drink that much of it. In fact it turns out I don't even really like whiskey that much, I just thought I liked it because I always drink it with you. And yes, I know that silence does not usually mean "yes". But I think in this case it was a reasonable assumption. And just so you know I did not give the rest of it Scotty on purpose, Keenser stole it when I wasn't looking._

_Stardate 2261.144  
You know, Dr. M'Benga is really good at taking care of sickbay in your absence. If you keep sending subspaces where all you do is yell at your commanding officer we might not even need you back. _

_Stardate 2261.145  
I was kidding yesterday. We definitely need you back. No one is visiting me on the bridge and it's boring. Please come back and visit me on the bridge._

_Stardate 2261.146  
Of course I know you have a real job. I have a real job too. I'm the Captain. You just don't notice all of the captainly things I do every day because you're too busy doing doctorly things. Speaking of doctorly things how is the conference? Are you famous in the medical world now because of that thing where you brought me back from the dead? _

_Stardate 2261.147  
I didn't know you were giving a speech. How come you didn't tell me?_

_Stardate 2261.148  
I would not have given you shit about it. Probably only a little bit. You could have practiced to me. I would have loved that and not even heckled you that much. Do you yell this much at people at the conference? They probably won't like that. You won't make any new friends if you yell at people as much as you yell at me._

_Stardate 2261.149  
Oh really? What's her name?_

_Stardate 2261.150  
You gonna hit that?_

_Stardate 2261.151  
I don't see what was so inappropriate about that. It's not like I was going to talk about it in my captain's log. "Stardate 2261.151, Chief Medical Officer Leonard McCoy banged a totally hot Lunar colony doctor named Katie." These are private sub-space messages, Bones. The only people who can listen to them are the captain and the CMO and that's pretty much taken care of. I mean I guess the Admiralty can listen them if they want to, but I don't know why they would bother._

_Stardate 2261.152  
Do you really think they listen to all of my messages? Don't try to distract me from the important stuff. Are you going to hit that? Have you already hit that?_

_Stardate 2261.153  
Since when is it none of my business?_

_Stardate 2261.154  
Well, I didn't hear back from you yesterday so I guess you must be busy. It's cool, I know you are super famous and everything and I guess I don't actually need to check in with every single member of my staff every day. See you in a few days._

-

Bones comes back from the conference and seems to be scowling a lot less than usual, which cannot be a good thing. He won't tell Jim anything else about Katie the doctor from the Lunar colony so Jim thinks he must have gotten laid. 

"How was she?" Jim asks over lunch the next day. “You know. In bed.”

Bones glares at him, and Jim's fears are confirmed. "That's rude, you know."

"Are you going to see her again?"

Bones shrugs. "Maybe. Shore leave next month. She might meet me in San Francisco if she can get the time off."

"Awesome," Jim says, and thinks that this must be what people mean when they say "love hurts." 

-

Katie can't get the time off. Jim does not celebrate this in the slightest.

Bones wants to go to their favorite bars from when they were cadets, and Jim, if he is honest, wants to go to those bars too. Uhura shuts that plan down right away and takes them to a place they've never been to before because it was way too classy for them back when they were cadets, but now that they're officers of the flagship of the fleet it is the kind of place you go to see and be seen. It's fancy and high-class and full of important people and Bones, of course, hates it. He tells everyone he hates it so many times that Uhura threatens to throw her drink in his face if he doesn't stop complaining, and Jim is laughing so much that he excuses himself to the bar to buy extra drinks in the event that Uhura follows through on her threat.

"You're thinking about him right now," says a voice in his ear, and it's Arianna the insanely hot Betazoid ambassador.

"Don't do that," Jim says, turning to face her. "It's really creepy."

Arianna shrugs. "You are, though. Is he here?"

Jim distinctly does not look at their table, but Arianna glances toward it anyway. She leans in close to Jim and smiles.

"Kiss me," she says.

"What?" Jim says, and then she is kissing him. He isn't expecting it, but he doesn’t see any reason to stop it. He hopes Bones isn't watching.

"He _is_ watching, and he's jealous," Arianna murmurs as she pulls away.

"Yeah, probably of me because I'm kissing _you_. You know you're ridiculously hot, right?" Jim says.

"Definitely not of me," Arianna says, and kisses him again. When she finishes, Jim glances at the table. Uhura, Spock and Sulu are deep in conversation and don't seem to have noticed their captain playing tonsil tennis with a woman at the bar, but Bones's eyes are boring holes into Jim's. Jim lifts a hand to wave and grins, and Bones rolls his eyes and throws back his whiskey.

"See?" Arianna says, looking smug. 

"No," Jim says. 

"Then I can’t help you,” Arianna says, and sighs. “I live a few blocks away. Want to see my place?"

Across the room, Bones glares down at his empty glass and doesn’t look up. 

"Sure," Jim says, and follows her out of the bar.

-

Katie the doctor gets time off during their last day of shore leave. She hops a shuttle to San Francisco and she and Bones go to brunch. 

"Brunch," Jim mutters angrily as he sits down in his seat on the first shuttle back to the Enterprise.

"What was that, Captain?" Spock asks.

"Who likes brunch, anyway?" Jim snaps.

"I like brunch," Scotty offers from Spock's other side.

“Do people have sex after brunch?” Jim wonders aloud, and immediately regrets it. 

“I am not an expert on the rituals associated with brunch,” Spock says, and looks down at his padd. 

Jim thinks that’s probably for the best.

-

Bones is on the very last shuttle back to the Enterprise. Jim decides not to ask how things went with Katie. Normally, he thinks – back in the days before this cold of his got so out of control – he would have teased, and pestered, and Bones probably would have gotten grouchy at him about it but then eventually given in and told him everything and they would have laughed about it together. But Jim doesn’t ask, so Bones doesn’t have a chance to get grouchy. They sit in the mess together and eat in silence, and at the end of the meal Bones asks, “Good shore leave?”

“Yeah,” Jim says. “You?”

“Yeah,” Bones says, and chuckles. “Definitely.”

“Good,” Jim says, and hates him for a moment.

-

Lieutenant Travers dies on a Friday. 

Jim watches it happen, and can’t help him. The rest of the away team makes it back to the ship in one piece. Jim writes his report and his letter of condolence and then wants to fall asleep immediately but can’t, so he pulls his uniform back on and walks through the dimly-lit corridors to Bones’s quarters, nodding at every passing gamma shift crew member. 

“Come in,” Bones says. Jim steps inside, and Bones is awake, sitting on his couch and reading a padd and wearing a pair of old sweats that Jim hasn’t seen since the Academy.

“Hey,” Jim says. “I couldn’t sleep.”

Bones’s brow furrows. “You want something for that?”

“No,” Jim says. “Can I hang out?”

“Of course,” Bones says, and scoots over. Jim sits down and pulls his knees up to his chest. “You okay?”

Jim shrugs. “Sure.”

Bones reaches out and pats Jim on the knee. “You couldn’t have done anything for him, Jim.”

“I know,” Jim says, and he does, but that doesn’t make it okay.

"Hey," Bones says, quietly, pulling on his shoulder. "Come here."

Jim doesn't need to be told twice. He scoots closer to Bones and lets Bones's arm fall around his shoulders. 

"It doesn't get easier," Bones murmurs. "Losing people, I mean. It never does."

"Yeah," Jim says, and clenches his hands into fists. "I didn't think so." Bones squeezes his shoulder and pulls him closer, until Jim is almost pressing up against his neck. Jim can hear him breathing heavily, and he burrows his face into the space between Bones's shoulder and his chin. 

He looks at Bones's cheek. He's got at least a day of stubble growing. Jim thinks about what the stubble would feel like against his lips. 

His lips are pressed against Bones's jawline before he is able to decide, so lightly that the stubble barely scrapes his skin. Bones doesn't move, and Jim pulls back. It is over so fast that Bones probably thinks it was an accident. Jim isn't sure it wasn't.

"You should get some sleep," Bones murmurs over his head.

"Yeah," Jim says.

-

They don't speak of it the next morning.

-

The thing about falling in love with your best friend, Jim discovers, is that there is really no good time to say it. "I’m in love with you" is not an easy thing to say, even if the person you want to say it to is _not_ your bristly, grumpy, once-bitten-twice-shy Chief Medical Officer and best friend. 

Not that Jim knows for sure. He’s never said it to anyone. 

He looks in the mirror in his quarters. “Bones,” he says to his reflection. “Can I talk to you about something? _Sure, Jim, make it quick, I always pretend to be busy even though I have plenty of time to visit you on the bridge_ ,” he says, affecting what Bones would probably say was a borderline offensive imitation of a gruff Southern drawl. “Here’s the thing, Bones. I think I’m in love with you. Whaddya say? Give it a shot? _Jim, stop fucking around and get out of my sickbay, you goddamn infant_.” 

He shakes his head. “I am so fucked.”

-

Jim doesn't want to _listen_ to Bones's sub-spaces messages to Katie the doctor. He simply wants to know if they _exist_ , if he's been sub-spacing her a little bit or a lot or maybe (hopefully) not at all. The thing is: Starfleet does not, in general, condone going through a fellow officer’s sub-space messages. It's a privilege that is only supposed to be exercised by the captain when the well-being of the ship and crew is potentially in jeopardy due to the contents of a message. Jim thinks that “wondering if Bones is still talking to Katie the doctor” is a fairly broad interpretation of "well-being of the ship and crew", but not one that will result in a court-martial. Probably.

Jim scrolls through the last week's outgoing sub-space messages. Lt. Cmdr Leonard H. McCoy, M.D. has sent two. Both are directed to coordinates on the Lunar colony. 

_Invasion of privacy_ , Jim thinks, in the voice in his head that sounds like Bones.

 _Research_ , Jim shoots back, in a new voice that sounds, oddly, like Arianna.

-

The mission does not go as planned. The planet is class m, uninhabited. It’s just a survey mission to see if Delta Tau IV might be a good place for a new starbase. The sensors show no signs of life or previous civilizations.

The sensors – not for the first time – are wrong. The planet’s natives are not happy that Jim and his landing party are there, and Jim, Sulu, and their security detail end up captured. They spend more than a day as hostages, chained and blindfolded, as the Enterprise stays in orbit, trying to figure out a way to break through whatever ancient technology is jamming the transporters. Jim finally figures out that life forms believe the Enterprise is there to block out their sun in fulfillment of a millenium-old prophecy, and they swear to the leader that if they are released, the Enterprise will leave and never return.

It’s a close call, and Jim has rarely felt so relieved to beam back up to the Enterprise. It takes a few hours for him to get feeling back in his wrists. After he refuses treatment in sickbay, checks in on the bridge and completes his report, he retreats to his quarters, ready to sleep for a century.

The door chimes as Jim is pulling his boots off.

“Come in,” he says.

Bones is storming into the room and pressing a hypospray to his neck before he can argue. “Bones, what the – “

“You’re dehydrated,” Bones mutters. Jim’s head suddenly becomes a little clearer, his mouth a little less dry. 

“Twenty-four hours tied to a tree will do that to you,” he says. “Thanks.” 

“Don’t thank me, just don’t sneak out of sickbay before I can get to you in the future,” Bones says, crossing his arms. “You sure you’re okay? They didn’t do anything to you?”

“No,” Jim says. “Well, except the twenty-four hours tied to the tree thing.”

“They said you were all dead,” Bones says conversationally.

“Oh yeah?” Jim asks. “Spock didn’t mention that.”

“They said they had burned your bodies, that there was nothing to even recover,” Bones continues, his voice completely even. “Spock almost believed them. We couldn’t get a read on your life signs, you know.” He takes a deep, rattling breath and stares down at his hands, clenched in his lap.

“They really wanted the Enterprise to leave orbit,” Jim says. He doesn’t mention how it had seemed, for many hours, like they really would be killed. He doesn’t mention the knife their leader held against his neck, the feeling of his blood running through his veins directly under the blade. He doesn’t mention regretting, desperately, never telling Bones that he loves him.

“I was pissed,” Bones says. “I punched a wall on deck eleven. Nearly broke my hand.” He flexes his right hand experimentally. “Feels okay now. Don’t pull that kind of thing again, all right? My knuckles can’t take it.”

“I’ll do my best,” Jim says. He wants to say _I’m in love with you_ , but his mouth isn’t working right, so instead he leans in and kisses Bones. He is thinking it so hard – _iloveyouiloveyoufuckiloveyou_ – that Bones must be able to hear him.

Bones freezes. His lips are softer than his jawline was weeks ago. 

“Jim,” he says slowly, and Jim pulls back. His heart seems to have stopped. “Is this – what you need?”

Jim has absolutely no fucking clue what Bones means. Of course this is what he needs. “Yes,” he breathes. “Yes.”

“Okay,” Bones says, and then they are kissing again. Bones’s hands are in his hair, Bones’s tongue is in his mouth, and Jim thinks, _oh_ , and pushes until Bones is flat on his back on the sofa. 

_It was like catching a cold_ , Jim thinks as Bones slips his hand under Jim’s waistband. _I think about you when I come_ , as Bones thrusts upwards into Jim’s hips. _You are like breathing_ , as he sees stars behind his eyes and collapses, sweaty and panting, onto Bones’s chest. _I’m in love with you_ , as Bones cries out, and Jim wants to capture the moment and hold it in his chest, and he is so, so glad that he didn’t die today on that planet because if he had died without ever seeing Bones like _this_ , well, that would have been a major fucking disappointment. 

“You should rest,” Bones says into his ear.

“Sounds good,” Jim says. 

“Not here,” Bones grunts, disentangling his limbs from Jim’s and starting to sit up. “You’re heavy.”

“Fuck you,” Jim says, but sits back on his heels. He wants to say, _You should stay_ , but instead he just holds his towel out for Bones to use to clean up and tries not to grin. Bones adjusts his clothes and runs his hands through his hair. It’s no use: he still looks like he just did exactly what he just did.

“Sleep, Jim,” Bones says, heading for the door. “Doctor’s orders.”

“Mmm,” Jim says. “Sure thing.” Bones rolls his eyes.

“Night,” he says, and leaves quickly, the doors sliding shut behind him. Jim crawls into bed and stares out the window. Just before he drifts off, he thinks, _I never said it_ , and then his eyes slip closed.

-

Jim wonders, as Bones arrives on the bridge the next day, if anything has changed.

Bones calls him an idiot twice before alpha shift is over. Nothing has changed. It is absolutely perfect.

-

Jim is a starship captain. He is in love with his best friend, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t busy. It’s five days before he finds himself alone in his quarters without any reports to file or briefs to complete. He picks up his communicator. 

“Kirk to McCoy,” he says, and it beeps. “Bones, can I see you in my quarters?” 

“Everything okay, Jim?” Bones says.

“I just wanted a word,” he says, and grins. 

Bones arrives in minutes, his brow furrowed. “What do you need?”

 _You_ , Jim thinks, and presses him up against the wall.

“Oh,” Bones says, and relaxes into the kiss. “Okay. If you – okay.”

“Okay,” Jim echoes, and bites down gently on Bones’s earlobe.

“Fuck,” Bones moans, and Jim bites again.

-

The thing about realizing you are in love with your best friend, Jim discovers, is that it doesn’t have to change things all that much. Bones still grumbles and grouches and call Jim an infant and commits what would technically be insubordination on a regular basis. He still visits the bridge unnecessarily, he still threatens Jim with physical violence if Jim doesn’t submit to an examination after a dangerous mission, he still chuckles and shakes his head when Jim makes jokes about Spock when they’re alone.

It’s just that now, sometimes, they wind up in bed. Now, sometimes, Jim leaves fingernail marks traced down Bones’s back, under his blue shirt where no one can see them. Now, sometimes, he stares at the curve of Bones’s hip in the starlight bleeding in through the window, and sucks marks into Bones’s neck, and traces Bones’s nipples with his tongue.

“Should get going,” Bones says one night when they have spent half of gamma in bed together.

“Why?” Jim asks, brushing his fingers along Bones’s ribs. “Stay.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Bones says, shifting and rolling away from Jim in one fluid motion, grabbing his black undershirt off the floor and pulling it on.

“What’s the big deal?” Jim says, sitting up and frowning as Bones reaches under the bed to find his socks. “You don’t have to leave.”

Bones doesn’t respond. He stands up and shimmies into his pants. “Yeah, I do.”

“You don’t,” Jim counters.

“Christ, Jim,” Bones snaps as he shoves his feet into his boots. “Can’t you fucking think about anything but yourself for one second?”

Jim doesn’t know what to say to that. He wasn’t thinking about himself at all. He was thinking about Bones fast asleep, curled up around him, their chests rising and falling as one.

“Sorry,” he says, even though he doesn’t know why.

“It’s fine,” Bones says, pulling on his blue shirt and turning to face Jim. His eyebrows are scrunched together. “Just – it’s fine.” He runs a hand through his hair. “See you later.” 

Jim watches him go and wonders what he’s doing wrong.

-

The opening of a new Federation starbase is always a big deal. As captain of the flagship of the fleet, Jim has to attend a ton of stuffy functions and meet with about a million admirals and smile a lot while they officially declare that Starbase 301 is a new force in the effort for a free and peaceful Federation. 

If Jim is totally honest, it is all rather boring. He’s extraordinarily happy at the closing reception, mostly because it means that in just another day or two he’ll be back on the Enterprise and out in the black. He bounces from table to table, greeting everyone magnanimously, for several hours, keeping an eye out for Bones or Spock or even Uhura, any excuse to get away from all of these diplomats and admirals and new Starbase staffers and talk to somebody he actually knows.

He almost sighs in relief when he catches sight of Bones standing at a table in the corner, and quickly excuses himself from an escalating argument between two Andorian diplomats. He weaves through the crowd and is about to clap Bones on the shoulder when he notices that he is standing very, very close to a red-haired woman in dress blues. He pulls up short.

“Hey,” he says, and Bones jumps about a foot in the air, startled.

“Oh,” Bones says. “Hey.” He glances at the woman, then back at Jim. “Katie, this is – this is Captain Kirk.” 

“It’s nice to meet you, Captain,” Katie says, smiling politely at Jim. “Leonard’s told me all about you.” She touches Bones’s elbow, the touch natural, and Jim feels his chest contract painfully.

“What are you doing here?” Jim blurts out. Bones raises his eyebrows. “I mean – it’s nice to meet you too.”

Katie laughs. “I’m stationed here,” she says. “Just transferred in time for the opening. It was a happy coincidence that the Enterprise was here for the opening ceremony.” She turns and smiles in Bones’s direction, like they are sharing a private moment, but Bones is still glaring at Jim. Jim thinks about all the things he wants to say and finds that none of them are sufficient. 

“Oh,” Jim says. “That – how nice.” He swallows hard. “I guess I’ll be going, then.”

“You don’t have to,” Katie says. 

“He has a lot to do to get ready to head out tomorrow,” Bones says quickly. “Don’t you, Captain?”

 _Captain?_ Jim wants to say. He can count on one hand the number of times Bones has called him “Captain”, and all of the others were in front of admirals, not pretty doctors who used to work on the Lunar colony. _Somebody’s gotta keep your feet on the ground_ , he imagines Bones saying whenever Jim tells him he could reprimand him for repeated improper address of a senior officer.

“Yeah,” Jim hears himself saying. “Yeah, I do. See you later, Dr. McCoy.” He turns around and finds his way to the door on autopilot. The party rages on, and he slips out, for once unnoticed. 

-

“Computer,” he says once he’s back in his quarters aboard the Enterprise the next morning. “Display list of sub-space messages coming from the quarters of McCoy, Leonard H in the last three months. Authorization code Kirk zero-three-four-three.”

“ _There have been twenty-one sub-space messages sent from the quarters of Lt. Cmdr. Leonard H. McCoy in the past three months_ ,” the computer chirps, helpfully bringing up a list of sub-space messages on the console.

Every single one of them was sent to the Lunar colony.

-

The thing about realizing you are in love with your best friend, Jim discovers, is that it is not, by definition, going to be a mutual thing. In fact – and Jim thinks they should mention this in a handbook somewhere, _The Idiot’s Guide to Falling In Love With Your Best Friend_ – in fact, just because you are in love with your best friend, just because you are sleeping with your best friend, just because you are pretty sure that your lips are transmitting the message loud and clear every time they come in contact with his, it does not mean that you best friend is not about to stab you in the back. It’s possible that your best friend is still seeing a pretty doctor from the Lunar colony. You can’t know for sure. 

The stabilizers on the Enterprise must have been damaged while he was on Starbase 301; it’s the only explanation for how off-kilter everything looks as Jim walks through the corridors on the way to the bridge the next morning. He wonders if he’ll have to crawl into the warp core again to fix it. He wouldn’t mind so much this time.

He sits down in the captain’s chair and tells Sulu to plot a course for the Boradis system, warp factor 3. He watches as the stars speed by on the viewscreen, and his communicator beeps.

“Sickbay to bridge,” Bones’s voice comes over the speakers. “Jim, can you come down here?”

Jim considers saying _No_. 

“Sure,” he says instead. “Mr. Spock, you have the conn.”

Bones is waiting in his office when Jim arrives. He stands up quickly as the doors slide shut behind Jim.

“Sickbay running as normal, Doctor?” Jim asks stiffly. 

“Yes,” Bones says. “But Jesus, can you drop the ‘Doctor’ bullshit, Jim?”

“What happened to _Captain_?” Jim says lightly. Bones rolls his eyes.

“Look, it was a weird moment,” Bones says, holding up his hands. “I didn’t even think to tell you she’d be there, and I definitely didn’t think seeing you both at the same time would be so – yeah. I mean, it’s not like she and I are – you know – _exclusive_. Well, obviously." He laughs a little. "And we’re both fine with that, there’s no way to be exclusive with me on a starship, and I don’t even know if it’s going anywhere, and I don’t know if _she_ thinks its going anywhere. It's pretty casual, you know? We both know we’re sleeping with other people, but I didn’t feel like there was any reason to throw it in her face, like, hey Katie, this is my friend Jim, we fuck sometimes but, you know, yeah, we agreed that was cool.” Bones takes a deep breath. “It was weird.”

Jim blinks. God, has he fucked up. He would laugh if he didn’t feel like his chest had just collapsed in on itself. It jumps out at him with stark, painful clarity: Katie isn’t Bones’s thing on the side. _Jim_ is Bones’s thing on the side.

“It’s not a problem,” he says, because he sees, now, that it isn’t. He is in love with Bones; Bones is not in love with him. There is no problem as far as Bones is concerned. “Don’t worry about it. She seems nice.”

“She is,” Bones says. “She’s great.”

“Good,” Jim says, and smiles. 

-

Falling in love with your best friend when your best friend is (maybe, probably) falling in love with someone else is not at all like getting a cold. It’s like having the Terellian Plague. You feel sick to your stomach. You want to sleep all the time. You want to see a doctor (one doctor in particular) but you know it won’t help.

Jim is in love with his best friend who does not love him back, but he’s also a starship captain and he’s nothing if not busy as all hell. It’s a week before Bones shows up at his quarters halfway through gamma and paces back and forth across the room and complains about the inability of Engineering to follow even basic safety procedures when completing routine warp core maintenance and the resulting half-dozen daily injuries.

“I’ll talk to Scotty,” Jim says as Bones winds down. “If you want.”

Bones shrugs. “He knows. They all know. I just like to bitch sometimes, you know that,” he says, and chuckles. He leans against the closet and looks down at Jim, half-smiling, his cheeks faintly pink. “Hey. You got some time tonight? Do you – uh – do you want to – “

“No,” Jim says, before he can say _yes_. “No, I don’t think so.”

“Oh.” Bones looks surprised. “Okay. That’s fine.” He scratches his head. “Is this – it’s not about Katie, right? Because she’s fine with it. Like I said, we’re not – “

“I just don’t think it’s such a good idea right now,” Jim interrupts. “Maybe it’s not a good idea at all, in fact. I mean, I don’t want to get in between you two. Twenty-one messages in three months? That’s pretty serious.”

Bones tilts his head. “Twenty-one messages in – what?”

Jim swallows. 

“Have you been listening to my sub-spaces?” Bones asks, his eyes widening.

“No,” Jim says, which is true. “Not – _listening_ to them.”

“So you just pulled that number out of your ass?” Bones says, stepping toward him.

“Look, I was just checking,” Jim mumbles. 

“Checking on _what_?” Bones says, his eyes flashing. “You know that’s against regs. Just because you’re my best friend doesn’t mean you can abuse your power to listen to my sub-space messages, do you know how fucking – “

"I don't want to be just your best friend," Jim says. Bones glares at him.

"Fine," he spits. "Whatever, Jim. We don't have to be friends if you don't want to. In fact maybe that would be for the best right now considering if you keep standing there I just might hit you."

"That's not what I mean," Jim says, and his own voice sounds very far away. 

"Then what _do_ you mean?" Bones asks, a bit stupidly in Jim's opinion, not that he would say that just now. 

“It doesn’t matter,” Jim says. “Forget it. Look, I didn’t listen to your messages, okay? I just checked to see that you sent them. You’re right, it was fucked up. If you want to report me for an ethics violation, go ahead.”

“I’m not going to report you,” Bones says. “You know I’m not going to report you. But _why_ did you do it?”

“If you can’t figure it out,” Jim says, breathing heavily, “I don’t think I can explain it.”

Bones stares at him. “What am I missing here?”

Jim shakes his head. “You should just go, Bones. Get out.” Bones stands, frozen, in the middle of the room. “I said get out. Do I have to make it a fucking order?”

Bones recoils like he’s been slapped. “No, sir,” he says quietly, and then he’s gone.

-

The thing about trying to get over your best friend, Jim discovers, is that he’s always fucking _there_. He’s there in staff meetings, he’s there in the mess, he’s there on away missions when you’re running through the jungle trying to escape from this planet’s killer computerized soldiers that can’t seem to tell the difference between peaceful visitors from the Federation and hostile intruders. 

“Goddamn self-sacrificing bastard,” Bones mutters under his breath as he runs a dermal regenerator over Jim’s killer computerized soldier-inflicted burn. Jim winces as the skin over his ribs turns slowly from red and black to pink and shiny.

“It would’ve killed Chekov,” he says between gritted teeth. 

“It would’ve killed _you_ ,” Bones snaps. “I should report you for recklessness.”

“We all made it back, didn’t we?” Jim asks, and shrugs.

“This time,” Bones says darkly.

The only place Bones does _not_ seem to be is in Jim’s quarters, in Jim’s bed, arching his back and gasping for breath. Jim knows that’s for the best. Jim _thinks_ that’s for the best.

He lays in bed in the middle of gamma, unable to sleep, and discovers that he loves Bones so much that he wants him to be happy, even if it means he has to be happy with someone else. Jim thinks that this is a surprisingly mature conclusion to come to. Bones would be proud.

-

“You should just talk to him,” Arianna says from her office on Earth. Jim passes a hand over his eyes. 

“There's nothing to talk about,” Jim says. “He made his position pretty clear. And look, I’m going to have to file a report on why we used a priority sub-space channel. Do you have _any_ official business with the Enterprise? ‘The captain needed advice on his love life’ is not going to fly with Command.”

Arianna shrugs. “I just wanted to talk. There aren’t that many people around here as interesting as you, Captain Kirk. Just make something up for your report. Jim, it just seems like you’re _missing_ something.” She twirls a curl around one of her fingers. “He was obviously into you. I could tell. I can _always_ tell.”

“Well, you’re wrong this time,” Jim says, starting to feel frustrated. “I basically - I _threw_ myself at him, and he chose her. The only thing that I’m missing is how I could be so - so fucking _blind_ for so long. I thought he - but he didn’t. He _doesn’t_.”

“I still think you should tell him,” Arianna says. “He’s your best friend. Don’t you think he would want to know how you feel?”

“I thought he already did,” Jim says quietly. 

Arianna bites her lip. “You’ll never find out unless you talk to him.”

“Then I guess I’ll never find out,” Jim says.

-

The mission does not go as planned. (Jim is getting tired of including that sentence in his reports). Jim is only supposed to be undercover for four days, studying the newly-warp-capable humanoid culture of Kesprytt III. Three weeks pass before the Enterprise breaks through the planet’s unusually astute defenses and beams him up, hungry and tired and still bruised from the beating he’d received a few days earlier from some suspicious security officers who seemed to think he was a spy from a rival faction. 

“Are you hurt?” Bones asks before Jim steps down off the transporter platform. Jim doesn’t even open his mouth before Bones jumps on the platform next to him, scanning him up and down with a tricorder. “Minor injuries, nothing serious. You’ve lost six pounds. You – “

“I’m exhausted,” Jim interrupts, stepping down off the platform. “But I’m fine.” He smiles at the assembled crew members; everyone looks relieved, except for Bones, who looks angry. Well, Jim thinks, there’s no telling why Bones is angry with him this time. Bones will just have to stay angry for a while. Jim’s been angry for weeks, Bones can wait until after Jim’s had a nap.

“You need to come to sickbay to – ”

“What I need is a hot meal and to get some sleep,” Jim says, leaving the transporter room with Spock and Bones in tow. “I’m relieving myself of duty for the next 24 hours, and I’ll be in my quarters if anybody needs me.” 

“Yes, sir,” Spock says. “Good to have you back on board, Captain.”

“Good to be back,” Jim says, and turns down the corridor toward the turbolift, leaving Bones standing outside the transporter room and glaring down at his tricorder.

-

When Jim wakes with his head buried under his pillow, he has a feeling he’s being watched. He tenses, ready to spring into action; he’d slept uneasily at best during his weeks on Kesprytt and wonders if he’s still dealing with the effects of the extended mission.

“You’re awake,” Bones says.

“ _Shit_ ,” Jim gasps, sitting up and wrestling his way out of his sheets. Bones is sitting on a chair right next to his bed. “Bones, what the hell? You scared the shit out of me.”

“Eat,” Bones says, pointing at a tray on Jim’s bedside table. “Turkey sandwich. Go on, it’s not poisoned.”

“Thanks,” Jim says, and takes a bite. “The food down there was terrible.” 

Bones snorts. “Other than that it was pretty much a vacation though, right?”

“Wasn’t so bad,” Jim lies, shrugging nonchalantly. 

“You shouldn’t have gone alone,” Bones says. “I don’t care what the first contact manual says, they shouldn’t have sent you alone."

Jim ignores him in favor of taking another bite of his sandwich. “Are there cranberries on this?”

“Of course,” Bones says. “What, you think I’d forget how you take a damn turkey sandwich?”

“You’re a saint,” Jim says. 

Bones watches him eat for another minute and then says, apropos of nothing, “I ended things with Katie four weeks ago.”

Jim swallows his most recent bite. “Oh?”

“It was never going to work out,” Bones says. “What with me on this five year mission and all.”

“Hm,” Jim says neutrally. 

“And,” Bones says, and pauses. “Well. There’s kind of – someone else.”

“Oh yeah?” Jim says, his mouth dry.

“Yeah, you idiot,” Bones snaps. “And I was going to tell you but then you had to go and get stuck on some goddamn planet for three weeks.”

Jim laughs, because nothing else seems appropriate. “Hey, it wasn’t my fault.”

“It’s always your fault,” Bones says, without heat. He leans forward in his chair. “You didn’t realize I was seeing her in the first place, did you?”

“Thought you broke it off when we started – you know,” Jim says, trying to fight back the heat crawling up his neck before it stained his cheeks. 

“Yeah,” Bones says, sighing. “And I never really told you, because I thought you were just looking to get laid. Because you’re fucking _always_ just looking to get laid. I thought you just needed me to add another role to the list. Best friend, chief medical officer, and a roll in the sack when you couldn't get it anywhere else.”

“It wasn’t like that,” Jim says.

“Yeah, I figured that out,” Bones says. “Eventually. Jim, you couldn't just expect me to _know_ that you meant you wanted to do more that just sleep together. I thought that kind of thing wasn’t ever really on the table with you.”

“It _was_ on the table,” Jim mutters sullenly. “It was all over the table.”

“Then you should have _told_ me that instead of spying on my sub-space messages and then ignoring me for weeks,” Bones says sternly. 

“I thought I _was_ telling you,” Jim says. "I thought it was _obvious_."

“Well, it wasn't,” Bones snaps. “I can’t read your mind.”

Jim looks away and frowns. 

“Eat your sandwich,” Bones says.

Jim takes a bite.

“Look,” Bones says, as Jim chews and swallows. “We both fucked up pretty bad.”

“Guess so,” Jim says.

“So. What now?”

“I don’t know,” Jim says. Bones sighs deeply.

“Scoot over,” he says.

-

The thing about realizing you are in love with your best friend, Jim discovers, is that it doesn’t always go the way you planned. Sometimes doctors from the Lunar colony get in the way. Sometimes you spend a few weeks feeling like you have the Terellian plague. Sometimes your best friend shows up with a turkey and cranberry sandwich (your favorite) and you eat it in bed and you have no clue, no fucking clue, what to do next.

“Do you ever suddenly become aware that you’re breathing?” Jim whispers as they lay in Jim’s bed, Jim’s head on Bones’s shoulder and Bones’s arm wrapped firmly around Jim’s waist.

“You’re crazy,” Bones mutters. “Go back to sleep.”

“Okay,” Jim says, and he does.

\- fin -


End file.
